Spirit of the Game
by Spinnerweb
Summary: Because Aliasse always half-murders Avan while playing soccer, Class G decide to teach her cricket instead. Knowing the rules of cricket will help in getting the whole story.


**(A/N: Why hello. For those of you who don't know, I am a huge cricket enthusiast and thought of this story during the ICC World Twenty20 because I think of everything in relation to Valkyria Chronicles 2. Having a knowledge of cricket is going to be rather necessary to get much of the humour in this story.)**

Avan screamed as the soccer ball Aliasse kicked struck him on the face for the third time in a row. Screamed so loudly, in fact, that the birds sitting on the bell tower, halfway across the school, flew away in alarm. Everybody rushed to see who was being murdered.

"If I keep this up she'll kill me!" Avan yelled half-delirously to the whole school assembled around him, while he attempted to stem the flow of blood from his nose.

"Well, you were all enthusiastic to teach her how to play soccer not too long ago," Zeri said calmly, leading him to the campus hospital. Aliasse set the ball she had picked back up down and sighed. Every day Avan tried to teach her soccer, and every day she would brutally injure him without meaning to. A trip to the hospital would ensue. Now she was sure Avan would give up for good.

Cosette led her away. Seeing how glum she looked, Cosette decided to teach her a comparatively less violent sport.

"Hey Aliasse, want to play cricket?"

"Cricket?"

"It's a sport. The best sport. Even better than soccer."

"What is 'sport'?"

Cosette bit her lip. Had she not taught Aliasse the meaning of simple words yet?

"Well, it's, uh..."

"It's something in which you have a bigger chance of losing, darling," Anisette said, coming over to them and looking annoyed. Cosette took one look at her outfit and deduced why. Anisette was wearing cricket whites - they were on the fourth day of a Test match with Class A - and were losing miserably (which was saying something, given that Test matches almost always ended in a draw).

"A good sportsperson never lets a loss affect her, though, so don't worry about that," Cosette said quickly to Aliasse.

"Actually, _do _worry about it if you're playing against Class A. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't gloat so much," Anisette said. "I think Alexis is going to forfeit the match" - Alexis was Class G's cricket captain and wicketkeeper - "just so we can get it over with."

"I wanna play! Teach me!" Aliasse said, grabbing onto Anisette's shirt. Half an hour later, after learning the meanings of certain cricketing terms, they dressed her in cricket whites, told her she was ready to play (or so they thought) and brought her in.

Although it was very unorthodox for team changes to happen during a match, it was easy to arrange in this case after Erik, who was bowling, conceded three sixes in a row and walked off the pitch in disgust. They brought Aliasse in, and despite her knowing barely how to play, they took comfort in the fact that she might, at least, distract the Class A batsmen because as always, she had torn off her shirt sleeves and tied her shirt at the waist.

And it did have an effect while Vario was bowling his second over. Despite being able to see only with his right eye, he threw the ball with his left hand; Class A's captain was convinced he was doing this just to put the batsmen in a tizzy. So the batsman on strike, who had been ogling Aliasse's waist, didn't see the ball in time and it hit him on the leg. Everyone from Class G shouted together: "Howzat!"

But it turned out that the drill instructor, who was acting as umpire, hadn't been paying attention (to Cosette he had been suspiciously glancing towards Aliasse) and an arguement ensued.

"The cat put his leg where I always throw the ball!" Vario said indignantly.

"Don't be stupid. You threw your ball where I always put my leg," the batsman said, who was red in the face.

"If my aim had been this good, cat, I would have bowled out your entire team hours ago," Vario said.

Cosette, who had been about to expose the batsman's perversion anyway, stepped in and with a lack of tact worthy off Avan, siad, "If you hadn't been staring at Aliasse you'd be able to decide whether you're out or not."

The batsmen blushed a deeper shade of red and hanging his head, walked back to the pavilion. Even the drill instructor averted his eyes as if he felt he was next. Fortunately Cosette didn't go any further.

That was how phenomenal Aliasse's fielding was. She exhibited the same style in bowling. Aliasse building her run-up was something worth seeing. She would walk up from a furlong, take two great bounding leaps and throw the ball with such speed that only Valkyrian strength could achieve; the first two times she did this the batsman missed and on the third time his bat broke.

While he went off to fetch a new bat, Anisette decided to teach Aliasse how to spin. "You've got to make the ball _dance,_ darling," she said.

"Or just chuck it and leave it up to luck," Pete suggested.

Class A's innings ended because Aliasse simply kept breaking bats and Class A's captain decided to declare the innings before the school ran out of spare bats.

In the dressing room, Zeri decided to give Aliasse a crash course on scoring boundaries.

"The trick is to hit the ball real hard," he said.

"Everyone knows that, the question is how to hit it real hard," Franca said.

Zeri said, "When the ball comes my way I close my eyes and picture an Imperial - ugly, stupid and with no dress sense. I hit the ball so hard that it goes to the heavens and back." He looked to his right an saw Helmut staring at him. There was silence for a moment, broken by someone saying, "Awkward."

Aliasse very near broke her own bat too, for whenever the ball would come her way she would swing and hurl it back at sixteen times its initial speed. Class A's fielders stared in dismay. But when, fifteen minutes into Class G's innings, Aliasse scored a half-century, Alexis insisted that she retire out because Randy, who was batting at number two, deserved to get a turn too, and form a partnership with someone who actually played like a normal human.


End file.
